Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[zapkitty]

Maya wrote:
Right, but my point is that the issue is more fundamental than you seem to realize. In other words, it doesn’t matter what proposal you’re talking about if you don’t know how to calculate and contain pressure.

… actually, “it doesn’t apply” is a quite acceptable answer when a concept really doesn’t apply …

to quote:

“In fact the Focus Fusion dense plasma focus design goes one step further by allowing an unstable collapsing magnetic field to do the fuel compression… no external compression required. This is one of several neat ways that the FF concept takes advantage of natural instabilities.”

Each pulse should generate about 66 kilojoules of gross fusion energy from hydrogen-11 Boron… and yet the physical structure of the device does not support the compression of the fuel. (It did its work holding the device together when a few million amps of current was dumped into the electrodes 🙂 )

General Fusion’s rather baroque concept is another way around the “problem”… a sphere a couple of meters in diameter is hammered to create a converging spherical shockwave through molten lead that is spinning inside. When the shockwave arrives at the center the pressure is (hopefully) enough to initiate fusion in the plasmoid hanging in the vortex at the center of the spinning lead… and yet at no time is any point on the outside shell subjected to the immense pressure at the center of the vortex.

Are two examples enough to start?

Again, each of the fusion startups has their own way of handling the issue.